Erica Jong Quotes

What storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank. ~ Erica Jong

Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love ... ~ Erica Jong

But I am wise if not yet quite old, wanting the poem more than the lover, wanting words more than the sticky dew men secrete in their private places. ~ Erica Jong

Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads. ~ Erica Jong

Many, many people have done a lot more sexual experimentation than I have. ~ Erica Jong

Glitch or not, we seem to need a power greater than ourselves. We seem to need enormous shadows of divinity stalking us. We know we are weak. Alcoholics are, above all, lonely, fearful pepole who make a fetish of loneliness, who think they
we
are too good to be part of the human race. And we have to be humbled to remember who we are
stumbling human beings, more ape than angel. ~ Erica Jong

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women. ~ Erica Jong

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. ~ Erica Jong

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare ~ Erica Jong

I have ne'er been in a chamber with a lawyer when I did not wish either to scream with desperation or else fall into the deepest of sleeps, e'en when the matter concern'd my own future most profoundly. ~ Erica Jong

I've not ceased being fearful, I've gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you go too far. ~ Erica Jong

Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations. ~ Erica Jong

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly. ~ Erica Jong

I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone
the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten? ~ Erica Jong

Beware of the man who denounces psychiatrists; / he is afraid. ~ Erica Jong

The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with you and possess that quality of joy. ~ Erica Jong

Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life. ~ Erica Jong

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile. ~ Erica Jong

The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em ... ~ Erica Jong

In a sane world, love and sex would not divide by gender. We could love like and unlike beings, love them for a variety of reasons. The battered adjectives for homosexuality
queer, lesbian, gay
would disappear and we would only have people making love in different ways, with different body parts. We are too far gone with overpopulation to insist that procreation be an immutable part of desire. Desire needs only itself, not the proof of a baby. We would do well to baby each other instead of making all these unwanted babies that no one has time to nurture or to love.
At this point in my life, I am blessed by my friendships with women. I make no distinction between my gay and straight women friends. I hat the very terms, feeling that any of us could be anything
if we were to unlock the full range of possibilities within. ~ Erica Jong

There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives. ~ Erica Jong

She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away "from all this". All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else? ~ Erica Jong

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion. ~ Erica Jong

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan. ~ Erica Jong

A DOZEN PHALLACIES WOMEN BUY
Phallacy 3.
If you use your power to support a man, he'll always support you.
Truth
Alas, not true. It's wonderful to stand by your man, to give to the one you love, but you must never forget yourself, and your children, since he may. Being a man, he takes for granted that his needs come first. Being a woman, you take that for granted too. Don't. Protect yourself -- not with feminist rhetoric or argument, but with actions. A bank account and real estate in your own name, money put aside for your kids' education that he can't touch (or give to the next -- younger -- wife and her spawn), a profession of your own to rely on. Above all, empower yourself, and then help empower him if it pleases you to do so. ~ Erica Jong

What all the ads and whorescopes seemed to imply was that if only you took proper care of your smells, your hair, your boobs, your eyelashes, your armpits, your crotch, your stars, your scars, your choice of Scotch in bars - you would meet a beautiful powerful, potent, and rich man who would satisfy every longing, fill every hole, make your heart skip a beat (or stand still), make you misty, and fly you to the moon (preferably on gossamer wings), where you would live totally satisfied forever. ~ Erica Jong

she died of internal weeping ~ Erica Jong

Every time women make tremendous strides, the right wing gets terrified and creates laws making it hard to get an abortion or birth control. ~ Erica Jong

I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion. ~ Erica Jong

I don't think there's just one person for everyone. It would be very hard for me to be with a guy who was not bright or funny. And he'd have to see the absurdities of the world, not exactly as I see them necessarily. ~ Erica Jong

Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms! ~ Erica Jong

There is a rhythm to the ending ... ~ Erica Jong

We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it. ~ Erica Jong

It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write. ~ Erica Jong

I find myself wondering how many other memories are hidden from me in the recesses of my own brain; indeed my own brain will seem to be the last great terra incognita, and I will be filled with wonder at the prospect of some day discovering new worlds there. Imagine the lost continent of Atlantis and all the submerged islands of childhood right there waiting to be found. The inner space we have never adequately explored. The worlds within worlds within worlds. And the marvelous thing is that they are waiting for us. If we fail to discover them, it is only because we haven't yet built the right vehicle - spaceship or submarine or poem - which will take us to them.
It's for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before. ~ Erica Jong

I have enormous pride in the survival of the Jewish people, the cultural heritage of the Jewish people, but I'm not observant, and I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't go to temple on high holy days, but I'm proud to be Jewish. ~ Erica Jong

What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren't for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, is edited. - Jerzy Kosinski ~ Erica Jong

But at the bottom of all the gloom, there is a sense that we are responsible for each other
if not for each other's happiness. There is empathy, admiration, respect for the other's intelligence and honesty. ~ Erica Jong

Often I find that poems predict what I'm going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have. ~ Erica Jong

The body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god's messenger. ~ Erica Jong

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation. ~ Erica Jong

Most sex is not really intimate. ~ Erica Jong

Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound. ~ Erica Jong

In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love. ~ Erica Jong

I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that. ~ Erica Jong

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war. ~ Erica Jong

We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality. ~ Erica Jong

Mothers and daughters
it's a comedy, but also a tragedy. We fill our daughters with all the chutzpah we wish for ourselves. We want them to be free as we were not. And then we resent them for being so free. We resent them for being what we have made! With granddaughters, it's so much easier. And great-granddaughters. ~ Erica Jong

Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right. ~ Erica Jong

A man assumes that a woman's refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it's no. When a woman says no, it's yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves. ~ Erica Jong

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart. ~ Erica Jong

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings. ~ Erica Jong

Whoever pushes America's sex button must be prepared for sirens and alarms. Whatever else we do in our lives will be drowned out by them. ~ Erica Jong

But we [women] are only at the beginning [of revamping feminism]. And our strictures on each other prove this. Our enforcement of thinness, of non-sexuality, of 'good' feminism versus 'bad' feminism, are proofs of our being at the beginning, not the end of a process. That younger feminists are embracing their sexuality is a sign of hope
a sign that women's lives will some day be less constricted, less fearful of the dark side of creativity (to which Eros provides the key). If that happens, we will at least have the full gamut of inspiration so long denied us. We will have access to all parts of ourselves
all the animals within us, from wolf to lamb. When we learn to love all the animals within us, we will know how to make men love them too. ~ Erica Jong

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did. ~ Erica Jong

Few women see power as an end in itself. The point of power is the freedom to cultivate roses. ~ Erica Jong

Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities. ~ Erica Jong

Why is it so hard to be human being? I wonder. Why do we have to surrender? And to what? What if you refused to believe in a higher power? What if you thought you were the only trustworthy higher power? I have done that all my life and I know it doesn't work. You are not enough. Your will is not enough. But God? God is a pagan dream, conjured out of neediness. ~ Erica Jong

Feminism is really the right of women to be full human beings and to not be defined only by their childbearing function. Feminism is really the right of women to be human beings. That's it, yet that's so frightening to a lot of people. A full human being wants satisfying work and love. A full human being is entitled to both, and is not simply defined by only one aspect of her being. ~ Erica Jong

When one follows the path with heart, one often bleeds. (But what is the alternative - a cauterized core?) ~ Erica Jong

Women really must have equal pay for equal work, equality in work at home, and reproductive choices. Men must press for these things also. They must cease to see them as "women's issues" and learn that they are everyone's issues - essential to survival on planet Earth. ~ Erica Jong

You're not too fat; you're just in the wrong country. ~ Erica Jong

Here is the difference between Oscar Wilde and me. For all the tortures he suffered, for all the ugliness of being punished for loving men, nobody read his lines and asked him: What does your husband think of that? Jail, exile
these were his lot. But never, What does your husband think?
Women may have the vote, but they are not free as long as that reaction erupts. Even those without husbands are judged as if they had offended them merely by writing the truth.
So immovable is the wall around a woman's freedom that she can't do a things without being asked to think of its effect upon some man who is presumed to be more important than she. ~ Erica Jong

[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves. ~ Erica Jong

Any one of my many shrinks could tell you that I was looking for my father. Wasn't everyone? The explanation didn't quite content me. Not that it seemed wrong: it just seemed too simple. Perhaps the search was really a kind of ritual in which the process was more important than the end. Perhaps it was a kind of quest. Perhaps there was no man at all, but just a mirage conjured by our longing and emptiness. When you go to sleep hungry you dream of eating. When you go to sleep with a full bladder you dream of getting up to pee. When you go to sleep horny you dream of getting laid. Maybe the impossible man was nothing more than a specter made of our own yearning. Maybe he was like the fearless intruder, the phantom rapist women expect to find under their bed or in their closets. Or maybe he was really death, the last lover. ~ Erica Jong

Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed in our surroundings to an almost morbid degree. ~ Erica Jong

Generations of women have sacrificed their lives to become their mothers. But we do not have that luxury any more. The world has changed too much to let us have the lives our mothers had. And we can no longer afford the guilt we feel at not being our mothers. We cannot afford any guilt that pulls us back to the past. We have to grow up, whether we want to or not. We have to stop blaming men and mothers and seize every second of our lives with passion. We can no longer afford to waste our creativity. We cannot afford spiritual laziness. ~ Erica Jong

I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper. ~ Erica Jong

Women are individuals in parenting, and why not? ~ Erica Jong

The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach. ~ Erica Jong

Perhaps every generation thinks of itself as a lost generation and perhaps every generation is right. ~ Erica Jong

It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as half of a couple. Solitude is un-American. ~ Erica Jong

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets. ~ Erica Jong

As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft. ~ Erica Jong

What was time but a convention, a habit of mind, a custom of dress? ~ Erica Jong

If I loved him, would I censor my writing to please him? If I married him, would I force my writing to be married as well? ~ Erica Jong

What makes a Man love Death, Fanny? Is it because he hopes to avert his own by watchin' the Deaths of others? Doth he hope to devour Death by devourin' Executions with his Eyes? I'll ne'er understand it, if I live to be eight hundred Years. The Human Beast is more Beast than Human, 'tis true ... ~ Erica Jong

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. ~ Erica Jong

If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs. ~ Erica Jong

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it . . . now that I can finally do it . . . I'm really raring to go.

I was in my study writing. I was learning how to go down into myself and salvage bits and pieces of the past. I was learning how to sneak up on the unconscious and how to catch my seemingly random thoughts and fantasies. By closing me out of his world, Bennett had opened all sorts of worlds inside my own head. Gradually I began to realize that none of the subjects I wrote poems about engaged my deepest feelings, that there was a great chasm between what I cared about and what I wrote about. Why? What was I afraid of? Myself, most of all, it seemed.

"Freedom is an illusion," Bennett would have said and, in a way, I too would have agreed. Sanity, moderation, hard work, stability . . . I believed in them too. But what was that other voice inside of me which kept urging me on toward zipless fucks, and speeding cars and endless wet kisses and guts full of danger? What was that other voice which kept calling me coward! and egging me on to burn my bridges, to swallow the poison in one gulp instead of drop by drop, to go down into the bottom of my fear and see if I could pull myself up? Was it a voice? Or was it a thump? Something even more primitive than speech. A kind of pounding in my gut ~ Erica Jong

Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world. ~ Erica Jong

Once becoming a mother, a woman might be radicalized in her feminism. She had a greater stake in saving the earth from male politicians. She had a greater stake in education and health, in the environment, in all social policy. She finally understood the way our society makes children and mothers the lowers of priorities.
...
I was hardly mellowed by the maternal transformation. If anything, my feminism grew more fierce. ~ Erica Jong

What is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death? ~ Erica Jong

Tis true that tho' People can transcend their Characters in Times of Tranquillity, they can ne'er do so in Times of Tumult. ~ Erica Jong

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past. ~ Erica Jong

I am old enough to know that laughter, not anger, is the true revelation. ~ Erica Jong

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook. ~ Erica Jong

Dorian Fairchester Faddington IV was a promiscuous poetaster of whom even his best friends declared that he "went from bed to verse." Though he was sexually omnivorous and on occasion preferred camels, like nine out of ten doctors, ordinarily his taste ran to women. Hermione Fingerforth was a woman-or so she liked to assume-and whenever she ran into Dorian it was not long before their lips met in a succession of interesting poses.

"The skin is the largest organ of the body," she once nonchalantly remarked to him as they were sunbathing in the nude together on the terrace of her penthouse in Flatbush.

"Speak for yourself," he declared, leaping on top of her in a sudden paroxysm of passion.

"Out, out of my damned twat!" she yelled, pushing him away and shielding her much-vaunted virginity with a silver-foil sun reflector.

"I take it you want me to reflect on what I'm doing," he quipped.

"Jesus Christ," she said crossly, "men are only interested in women in spurts. ~ Erica Jong

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand. ~ Erica Jong

Each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's. ~ Erica Jong

People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas. ~ Erica Jong

They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck. ~ Erica Jong

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart. ~ Erica Jong

That is what you love a friend for: the ability to change your angle of vision, bring back your best self when you feel worst. And speak the truth
but without malice. Loving candour is the secret of friendship. ~ Erica Jong

The trick is not how much pain you feel
but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses. ~ Erica Jong

You're afraid he'll leave you and you'll fall apart. You don't know that you can get along without him and you're afraid to find out because then your whole potty theory will come tumbling down. You'll have to stop thinking of yourself as weak and dependent and you hate that. ~ Erica Jong

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love. ~ Erica Jong

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness. ~ Erica Jong

My generation had Doris Day as a role model, then Gloria Steinem
then Princess Diana. We are the most confused generation. ~ Erica Jong

People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared. ~ Erica Jong